French First Army

The French First Army was a field army of France that was active from 1914 to 1918, from 1939 to 1940, and from 1944 to 1945. Auguste Dubail commanded the army during World War I, and it took part in the failed invasion of Lorraine before fighting on the Flanders front. At the start of World War II, Georges Blanchard took command of the First Army, which was trapped in a vast pocket during the Battle of France in 1940. The army launched a delaying action at Lille as the Battle of Dunkirk took place, delaying the Germans for three days and allowing for 100,000 men to be evacuated from Dunkirk as they were destroyed in battle. In the summer of 1944, the army was recreated as Armee B under Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and it took part in the Operation Dragoon landings in southern France before advancing up the Rhone, through the Belfort Gap, into Alsace-Lorraine, and into Wurttemberg during the 1944-1945 push into Germany. The army was mainly composed of North African Berbers/Arabs or pied noirs, and it had a strength of 320,000 troops by the end of the war. In April 1945, the army encircled and captured the XVIII Armeekorps in the Black Forest, and it cleared southwestern Germany before advancing into Austria at the end of the war. The army was also active during the Cold War, later being deactivated.